Homeward Bound
by Poisonrose22.5
Summary: After receiving a mysterious message from The Voice,the Flock head to Dr. Martinez's house to try to live a normal life. How will the Flock handle the horrors of being "normal" kids? read on. FAX, if I say anything about the others I'll kill half the plot
1. Chapter 1

**Yaay, new fic! I figured I had to write something, and I'm sorry I've been gone so long. Forgivenesses? Once I get the basic Ideas for this down, I'll do some stuff I've been wanting to do with Baby Wings, and then I might write another chapter. But I have to do it in that order, or the new chapter is gonna suck. Lov y'all!**

**This takes place after STWAOES, k? I didn't want to do one that was after MAX or TFW, because they interfered with my storyline. So enjoy ******** (-Smiley Face)**

**This one'll be pretty short and boring, just because I needed to deal with all the basics. The next one should be longer and more colorful.**

**Lets just get straight out and say, I don't own Maximum Ride. If I did, Iggy would still be in my attic, and this would be the fourth book.**

I didn't really get what the point of this was, but I was (I confess) pretty happy about it. And nervous. But I tried not to think about that as I rang the doorbell. Now, unless you can somehow read my mind through your computer screen, you're probably wondering what's going on. Well, I'll tell you.

After my last tearful goodbye with Mom, we'd flown across the country to some random town in Massachusetts. There we'd stayed for a while, doing something or another, before the voice came into my head and told me _there's been a change of plans, Maximum. Go back to your mother._ This surprised me so much I almost fell out of the tree I was in.

When I regained composure, I asked _**and what do I do there, O brilliant one? **__Live. Survive. Be safe. Enroll in school; try to lead a normal teenage life for a change. _It paused, and, with a sound that might have been a chuckle, said_ try not to let it bore you to death._ So we high tailed it back to mom's, much to everyone's excitement.

And, back in the present, the door opened. The usual, gushy happyfest ensued; I'll spare you the details. Finally, after what seemed like an hour of hugging and "I missed you" mom finally got around to asking me what we were doing here. When I told her, she just looked at me for a really long time. When she finally spoke, she said, "I guess we'll have to find you all a place to sleep, then." And walked out of the room.

As soon as she was gone, Ella ran up to me and started gushing. "Ohmigod! I can't believe I get to live with you! This is gonna be SO awesome! You are gonna LOVE FDR!" when we looked at her blankly, she said, "Franklin D. Roosevelt Public School." Then she put on a business like voice, "Incorporating age levels K-12, with beautiful grounds, kind caring teachers, and a newly painted school building! Which is Vice Principal speak for, 'squashing every grade into one building because we don't want to pay for three, a big green with trash everywhere for the kids to beat each other up on, teachers who will never admit to how much they torture their students, and a building that has so many swears spray painted on it that they finally had to paint over it.'"

She smiled at us. We looked at each other, not sure if she was joking or not. She sighed. "Come on up, guys, you need to know where you're sleeping." We followed her up, tired from our long flight. Mom was standing in the hallway, when we came into view, she waved and said, "I've only got three air mattresses, so in one of the guest bedrooms, two of you will share a bed." I tried to keep from laughing. To us, "you'll have to share a bed" was to some people like saying "I'm sorry, you'll have to share this ten thousand dollars, ok?"

Gazzy ran in and out of both rooms, yelling, "Boys claim the one with three mattresses!" before collapsing onto the bed in the beige colored room. His snores began instantly. I put my hands up in mock defeat and led Angel and Nudge into the peach room, pulling Angel into the bed with me. No way was either of us sharing a bed with Nudge; we'd both gotten enough bruises sharing dog crates with her.

……………………

When I woke up, it took me a few seconds to remember where I was. The pillows were soft, the sheets smelled like laundry. Mom's. I opened my eyes. The room was empty. I panicked a little, before I heard the happy talk and laughter coming from downstairs. I slowly pulled myself out of bed, trying to run a hand through my hair and not succeeding.

I heard a small commotion downstairs, and rushed to the landing. Mom was brandishing a comb at Fang, who looked like a cat that someone had sprayed with water. I stifled a laugh. Fang's hair was his weak point. "Fang! Your hair is a mess! You practically have dreadlocks, for god's sake! You're going to have to let me do something about it if you ever want to leave the house again, I like my children to look presentable!" the way she said my children made my heart swell, like she had already accepted them as part of her family. Gosh, my mom was so cool.

Meanwhile, mom had caught Iggy snickering. "The same goes for you, young man! I don't know why all of you boys like you hair so long, but it gets to be a real rats nest! How long has it been since you brushed your hair?" Iggy shrugged. "A month, maybe?" mom let out a sigh of exasperation and turned back to her cooking.

As it turned out, Iggy and Angel had hair so fine that it hadn't really tangled that badly, and some detangler spray and my ferocious mother were able to get their locks sorted out. Gazzy's hair was so short it was impossible for it to tangle. Fang and I were not so lucky. After working Fang's hair with her comb, mom pronounced that it was so matted underneath that she was going to have to cut it.

Fang looked so pissed off none of us dared approach him while she snipped, huge hunks of hair falling to the floor in tangled mats. When she was done, Fang still had a surprising amount of hair, and it looked good, shaggier from where the big chunks had come off, and more out of his face. Then it was my turn. Mom took one look at my hair and brought out the scissors. My hair was ten times worse than Fangs, and I ended up with almost the same floaty cut I'd gotten the first time in New York. Mom even trimmed Total's fur, though he seemed to like it a lot more than we did.

When she pronounced us all acceptable, she basically threw us all into the shower, stuck all our clothing (which didn't amount to much) into the wash, and started trying to wash Total. We could hear him yelling about how undignified all of this was from the house.

Let me tell you, after a long time on the run, a hot shower is like a little slice of paradise. I stayed as long as I could, until Fang banged on the door and asked me what was taking so long. As I walked out, I said, "all yours, your highness, you can beautify yourself all you want," and smirked at his expression and Iggy's laughter.

After all this, it was still only noon, so mom announced that we all needed a shopping trip. The boys complained, and I started with them, but Angel and Nudge looked so excited at the prospect that I couldn't bear to rain on their parade. I figured, how bad could it be? Just call me miss softie. Two hours later I was realizing just how bad it could be. The mall was huge and crowded, with no escape routs. I felt Iggy's hand nudge into mine, and knew how hard this rolling mass of voices, sounds and objects must be for him.

At the stores, Angel and Nudge ran ahead, grabbing things off racks not just for themselves, but for everyone in our flock, holding slinky dresses and jeans so skinny they looked like you could barely move your legs in them up to me. In the end, I bought mostly my usual ensemble of loose jeans and t-shirts, prompted into a couple of pretty things by the girls.

When we finally walked out of the mall, I felt relief, that is, until Ella said, "you can wear your new things to school tomorrow!" now, my experience with the word school (and schools in general) hasn't been very good, so as you can imagine, that sort of made my relief balloon float away.

……………………………

**How does you like it? If I read it again and think it sucks, I'll probably just edit it. I have a bunch of things on the waiting list, I know, but this was my experiment to see if I could write a fic without slipping into Elizabethan English.**

**R&R&R&R&R&R&R&R&R?**


	2. Chapter 2

**HiHIHIHIHIHIH! I r back. I love updating at random hours of the night, so that I know people who are in different time zones are awake. (not that it makes much difference right now, It's after midnight pretty much everywhere in the USA.)\**

**So, I forgot to mention that in this fic, Max, Fang and Iggy are 17, Nudge has just turned 16, Ella is 16, Gazzy is 13 and Angel is barely 12.**

Max POV:

I woke up from a dream about erasers, before remembering that they were all dead, and that I was pretending to be a normal teenager, and today was my first day of school. School. It seemed forever since the last time I'd gone to school, back at Anne's, and that hadn't turned out so well. Oh well, time to get dressed.

Nudge had seen me lift my head and immediately bounced over to me. "Hi Max! Glad you're up! I picked out some clothes for you to wear!" she thrust a bundle of clothes into my arms. I looked skeptical. "Pleeeeeeeeeease? Just try them on?" I sighed. I hate bambi eyes.

Looking in the mirror, I wished I had skipped. Nudge had managed to get me the **only **feminine shirt, the **only **skirt, and the **only **pair of heels I had bought. Separate they had seemed innocent enough, a pink shirt with a bit of a low neckline, a pair of reasonable wedges, and a plain denim skirt, but together, on me, the heels looked hazardously high, the shirt scandalously low cut, the skirt immodestly short. And wasn't that little hole a teensy bit too close to the crotch? I started to sweat. The shoes made me wobble unsteadily.

Who knew feminine clothing could be more terrifying than a full-grown eraser? "Umm… How 'bout we compromise. I'll wear the shirt, and some jeans, and uh… those sparkly flats you picked out for me?" she looked down for a second, and then perked up. "Ok! You'll still be the prettiest girl in school!" she said, and then ran down stairs.

Downstairs, mom handed me the backpack she'd bought me, because I had claimed to have lost my old one. I hated lying to her, but I knew she wouldn't understand if I told her my old backpack was stuffed in the back of my closet, filled with as many articles of our new clothing as I could manage to stuff in there. I just wanted everyone to have a change of clothing for when it became unbearable if we were on the run again. _When_ we were on the run again.

I looked at my flock, dressed for school. Angel was wearing the most impractical dress for a girl her age, it was pink, and barely came down to her knees, with frouff all over the front. I bet she didn't even have shorts underneath. Nudge was wearing a short skirt and top similar to the ones Ella wore. Aww, they were already just like best friends!

Only the boys hadn't changed, Gazzy in his camo, Fang in all black, and Iggy in his usual plain long sleeved shirt and fitted jeans. I saw he'd gotten a new pair of those slip-ons he loved. Though he'd never admitted it, I knew Iggy still had trouble tying his shoes.

"Ok, kids! We got to get you to school!" mom snapped me back to reality. "We only live about a block away, you can walk." We nodded and headed out.

When we got to the school, we saw Ella hadn't been kidding. It had a big expanse of grass, a parking lot, and a whitish building that already had new swears painted on it. The inside was the typical linoleum job, the office glassed in. We took a seat on folding chairs in the waiting area, watching the halls slowly empty of students until a stern looking woman came out of one of the doors and ushered us in.

"Hello, I am Ms. Morticani, and I am your new vice principal." The office was crowded with all 8 of us in it. She opened the door on the other side of her office, and a nice, if harried looking woman walked in. "This is Mrs. Honeylove. She will be your teacher umm…" she looked at Angel. "Ariel." "Yes, of course. She will show you to your classroom, along with" this time she looked at Gazzy. "Captai-" "Zachary." I said sharply. He looked properly abashed. Mrs. Honeylove ushered the two out of the room.

Next she turned to us. "Max, Nick, and Krystal, is it? Ella will show you to your High school wing. Max and Nick will be attending Eleventh grade, and Krystal will be in your Tenth grade class, Ella." She motioned for us to go, but none of us stood. She hadn't mentioned Iggy at all.

"What about Jeff?" I asked. "Oh, yes, well, Jeff will be put in our Special Education program." Iggy's cheeks flamed. "Special Ed? Isn't that for, like, retarded kids?" "There's really no need to put him in Special Ed." I said quickly. "Nick or I can just read him the text or whatever." "I have spoken with the principal, and decided that this is for the best. Our teachers are instructed to give out a pop quiz at least once a week. What would he do then? Dictating would be considered cheating on both parts. This is just one of the many reasons. You must learn to trust the adults to make the judgments." Oh, yeah, because that had worked _so_ well in the past.

She reached over to a phone and dialed. "Hello? Yes? Is Jasper Eldritch in this class? Please send her down to the office immediately, she will be escorting your new student down." She hung up, looking at us expectantly. We stayed put. She sighed and went back to her work.

After a while, someone came into view. She had pale skin and straight black hair cut to her chin and streaked violently pink. Her eyes were green, too big for her face, and she had freckles on her nose. She dressed simply, olive army jacket, black shirt, jeans that were too long for her and pooled around her black combat boots. She was also in a wheelchair.

3rd person POV (Iggy):

SPED CLASSES? No way. Iggy hated it when people rubbed his blindness in his face. He sat in silence, stewing. Then he heard something that sounded like a bicycle coming down the hall, getting closer and closer. Were bicycles allowed at this school?

Then the sound of wheels stopped in front of him and a voice that was lower down than usual said "Hi, I'm Jasper." He felt fingers lightly brush his palm and he grasped the hand, feeling a leather biker glove and the callused palms beneath. "C'mon, we're gonna be late for class." The firm hand steered him down a hall.

"I'm Jeff." He said. "Cool. So, you nervous?" "What?" "Well, from the look on your face, you're either really nervous, or you think you're going to be stuck in a classroom full of seriously mentally challenged kids." Iggy was surprised that she'd read him so easily. "Well, yeah." "It's ok. There are three classrooms. One is for the kids who can barely function by themselves. The second is the kids with mild mental disabilities and stuff. They try to integrate them into some normal classes. The third one is for kids like us, brains perfectly fine, but physically too handicapped to function in a classroom."

There was silence for a while. Iggy tried to memorize all the twisting hallways. You'd think for Special Ed, they'd make this place easier to find. Finally, when the silence got awkward, Iggy said, "so, do you wear those gloves to ease your palms?" he could hear the smile in her voice when she said, "yeah. I used to get really bad blisters. My palms are still callused, and if I pull a muscle, it's torture, but my upper body strength is excellent, and I won't lower myself to one of those stupid electric things, I'm not that weak." "I absolutely get what you're…" they kept talking until they finally reached a doorway.

Max POV:

Ella dropped us off at our first class with a map of the school and a late slip. The teacher, Mr. Sanders, barely looked up when we came into the room. When he finally did, he said, "Ah, fresh meat. In case you hadn't noticed, I'm in charge here, and since the mad science lab fired me, I'm being forced to teach you imbeciles basic Science. Pat! Paul!" two white boys who looked like they were trying to imitate gangster kids with their baggy sweatshirts looked up guiltily. "If I catch you snorting Pixie Stix one more time, you're going to come sit in the front of my room in a dunce cap and give us a long essay on the importance of fire extinguishers in schools."

Wow, this guy sure knew how to discipline his students. "As our _won_derful vice principal had reminded me, you morons apparently don't know enough about propulsion distance and force. Hey, _He's going the distance; he's going for speed._ Who's it by?" the girl I was sitting next to, a bouncy blond with big jade colored eyes bobbed up and down with her hand in the air. "Yes, Maddi?" "The Distance, by Cake, Mr. Sir!" she said. He nodded and she pumped her fist.

The rest of the lessons passed by in a blur, until the hour before lunch, which is when we had "electives". as we walked downstairs I looked at our schedule. "Drama?" Fang snorted. We finally reached our destination, which had Theater Room painted in red over what looked like Aerobics. Inside, it was the un-classroomiest classroom I'd ever seen. It was smaller, the ceiling lower and covered with a criss-crossing of pipes. Instead of desks, there was a sort of bleacher thing set up, and on it was an assortment of mismatched couches and chairs. The floor looked like someone had fit a bunch of beige rubber puzzle pieces together, and there was a threadbare rug in the middle of an empty space with a projector screen and some black curtains behind it.

Fang and I picked a seat up in the back, on a cushy pink couch, next to a girl with dark blond hair who was squishing herself down as far as she could. The class began, the teacher coming out from behind his desk. He was dressed casually for a teacher, his curly salt-and-pepper hair slightly unkempt.

" Welcome one, welcome all. First a few announcements, as I'm sure you _all _know, auditions are this week, we are doing an interesting version of A Midsummer Nights Dream, and I'd _really _appreciate it if you showed up. I'll get down on my knees if I have to. Remember, everyone's got a hidden talent. Now I hear we have some new students today." He said. "In that spirit, shall we play a game of round robin, to get you all acquainted with these newcomers? I know I'll have to ask you for your name a thousand times any way, but it's a good start. Here, Gigi, hon, why don't you come down and demonstrate with me."

The girl next to us sighed and unfolded herself from her chair and slowly walked down, blue eyes on the ground, purple high tops catching the frayed ends of her overlong jeans. "Sure, dad." She said when she got down.

I was a little apprehensive at first; I mean, come on, the games he was teaching us looked like stuff a kindergarten teacher would show to her class. But soon I was caught up in the game, and I didn't snap out of it until the bell rang for lunch.

Fang and I walked slowly with the crowd making their way to the lunchroom, dragging our feet. The school lunches looked fairly edible, certainly better than some meals I've had, and as we walked into the lunchroom, we saw a familiar face waving from the back of the room. Ella, Nudge, Iggy, and that girl, Jasper were already eating.

I noticed that Ella had purposefully posed herself where she and Iggy would occasionally bump elbows. Hmmm… I also noticed Nudge shooting murderous glances at Ella when she wasn't looking. Uh-oh. Of course, clueless Ella was still babbling on.

"And the Prom is next week! You _are _coming to Prom, right?" I blanched. Fang smirked at me. "We should go Max! It would be, like, es-oh much fun! Pleease can we go to Prom, Max?" this came from Nudge. "I'll go." Said Iggy with an evil looking grin. "Fine." I conceded. Wow, I'm really becoming a pushover. The rest of lunch passed uneventfully.

Jasper seemed like a really nice girl, and she had bonded very well with Iggy. I noticed that she wasn't trying to push him to something more than friendship, which made her the odd one out on that side of the table.

Iggy POV:

It turned out that Iggy and Jasper had the first period free (it was called "study hall") so Jasper started helping him learn Braille, guiding his fingers over the bumps covering the page. He was starting to get the hang of it when the bell rang, and began to slowly read the textbook for history, his next subject. At the beginning, it felt like he was translating a code, going back and forth between books, but as time went on, he was able to get the hang of it, and by lunch, he was reading fluently.

They located Ella and Nudge and sat down with them. Ella kept knocking elbows with him, which was sort of annoying. He and Jasper talked all through lunch, it turned out they had a lot in common, from music to a heartfelt love of fire, to an "appreciation of the beautiful body" as Jasper called it.

Ella and Nudge were jabbering on about some event or another, blahblahblah, when Max and Fang walked up. Ella said something to Max, and Iggy could feel her stiffen. He tuned into the conversation. "-leease can we go to Prom, Max?" hmm, Prom, eh? There were plenty of hot girls at prom, probably willing to do a pity dance with a certain poor, blind boy. "I'll go." Iggy said, hoping he wasn't grinning as much as he thought he was.

The rest of the day passed in a blur. They stayed in the same classroom except for electives. Their first elective was Art, and the teacher gave them instructions and then sat was quiet for the rest of the class. Jasper said she was at her computer, on ebay, like she was every day.

Iggy decided that Special Ed might not be so bad after all. He realized that he wanted to come back to school the next day, so he could talk to Jasper again. Was this what it was like to have normal friends?

**Ok, reasons for Prom:**

**I needed a good Fax scene**

**I REALLY wanted to get Max into a dress. (It's been my ambition since I read TFW.)**

**The Voice told me to. ******** -- Smiley face**

**Now, some of you are thinking that in your school they'd just hand Jasper an elevator key and tell her to deal with it, not put her in a Special Education class. Well, this isn't your school. This school is a lower middle class school. They don't have elevators.**

**And yes, the teachers are based on my own teachers (some previous), except the theater teacher, who is someone more personal.**

**I will probably integrate some of my friends into this story, but under false names with their personalities modified.**

**Reviews rock my world. Review and you get 3 virtual tofu dogs, a virtual Christmas cookie, 7 virtual chocolate bars, and a virtual hug. (Limited time offer. Poisonrose22.5 .[TM R C M!!!!] is not responsible for any damage done by hug, or reactions to any of the above products. Poisonrose22.5 .[TM R C M!!!!] is a branch of StuffCo . [TM R C M!!!!!!!!!!] all rights reserved. Use of such trademark brands in other Fanfictions is punishable by FLAMES!!!! And a pissed off note in all my FFs. Have a nice day. :D)**

**R&R&R&R&R&R&R&R&R&R&R or die.**


	3. Goodbye

**It's been over a year since I joined FanFiction. It was a crazy year, an awesome year, both the best and worst year of my life. But a year is a long time for a teenager, and within this past year I've encountered obstacles that are making it hard to continue on FF. Not bad things, no messy breakups or anything like that, but since I joined my life has really changed (for the better) and I need to do other things. I've loved writing here, I loved all the comments, flames and compliments alike, and I've loved the feeling of being connected. I'll be sad to let this go, but this is a part of me that I feel I have to leave behind as I journey through life. So from now on, all stories are finished, all of this is done. I'm leaving the account up with everything I've written on it, because I can't bear to get rid of it just yet, so you can still go back through what is written if you want. I'll miss this. Goodbye.**

** Write on.**

** Poisonrose.**


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